Imagine soaring through the atmosphere, executing hair pin turns and barrel rolls from the cockpit of your very own Hover-Jet. Jagged peaks cover the landscape of a vibrant, crystalline world that your ship navigates with smooth bursts of speed over obstacles and through floating rings. As you gaze out your window, each dip and turn feels real, like you’re inside your own retro-gaming flying fantasy. Welcome to the beautiful virtual world of Faceted Flight, now with a new free demo available via Kickstarter.

Created by indie VR studio The Department of Silly Stuff, Faceted Flight is the new VR stunt flyer that is a spiritual successor to classic games like Pilotwings and Starfox. The game combines a decidedly vintage aesthetic with the modern VR experience, letting players loop and bank their way through a range of expansive, imaginative landscapes.

Faceted Flight was conceptualized and created by developer Matthew Scott, who spent much of his career at premier game studios Oddworld and Valve working on award-winning franchises, most notably Portal 1 & 2, Left 4 Dead 1 & 2, and the Half-Life 2 Episodes. Eventually, Matt opened his own game studio, The Department of Silly Stuff, and set his sights on developing VR games.

“Faceted Flight was born out of my obsession for flying in Virtual Reality.” confesses Matt. “I grew up playing early 3D games like X-Wing, Star Fox, and Wipeout. I wanted to create a game that gave players the sense of thrill and amazement those games gave me.”

The new free demo celebrates the launch of Faceted Flight’s Kickstarter and invites players to soar through a chain of islands at sunset. Featuring enhanced graphics, thanks to a new game engine, the game also boasts an entirely new level creation process, allowing for environments much larger than previously possible. Complete with an 8-bit theme song and a mellow, spacey, electronica soundtrack, Faceted Flight offers a perfectly well rounded, immersive experience.

“A unique aspect of Virtual Reality is the concept of presence, the feeling that you’re actually inside a virtual world. The best way to deliver an experience that achieves presence is to design specifically for VR from day one, which is what we’ve done with Faceted Flight,” explains Matt. “At The Dept of Silly Stuff, gameplay comes first. We focus on games that are not only fun, but games that feel great to play.”

Faceted Flight Comes to Kickstarter

Faceted Flight’s new demo commemorates the launch of its official Kickstarter campaign, created to help The Department of Silly Stuff development team fund and complete the finished, expanded game. Offering more robust gameplay and deeper worlds, the final game will present five unique landscapes inspired by the American Southwest, the volcanic islands of the Pacific, the forests of California, and others. The enhanced gameplay will include racing, ring attack, exploration, and online multiplayer, as well as a broader range of aircraft models.

Backers are eligible to receive a range of exciting rewards for their donations, including:

Early access to the game on Steam

Digital art books filled with concept art and 3d models

Naming a call sign to be immortalized as an A.I. Pilot

Naming of aircraft models and airfields

Collaborating to design an aircraft and test fly it in a special Early Access build of the game

Collaborating with designers to choose one of the game’s environments.

In addition to creative development, the Kickstarter goal of $50,000 will go toward supporting Faceted Flight on different VR platforms, including HTC Vive and Oculus Rift. Stretch goals will help the team create even more awesome environments, with an exciting $100K benchmark for creating a moon level.